Time was when hit plays on Broadway and London’s West End were routinely turned into big-budget films. Most of the time, alas, the plays in question were recast and “adapted” within an inch or two of their lives, sometimes to unintentionally comic effect. On occasion, though, the screen versions bore far more than a passing resemblance to the plays on which they were based, especially when some or (rarely) all of the stars and supporting players from the original casts were invited to reprise their roles for the camera. Even when the resulting performances feel overprojected and awkwardly “stagy,” they can still offer us infinitely precious glimpses, however imperfect, of the evanescent phenomenon that is great stage acting.
Mrs. T and I were recently watching John Ford’s film of Mister Roberts, in which Henry Fonda repeated his much-admired performance from the original stage production, and it occurred to me to draw up a list of other films and telecasts that preserve—more or less—significant English-language “creator” performances of the past. I invited my followers on Facebook and Twitter to chime in, and the result was this informal catalogue, which turned out to be quite a bit longer than I’d expected. (I have deliberately omitted musicals, which would have made it unmanageably long.) The results make no pretense of comprehensiveness, but it strikes me that you might find them interesting anyway:
• Beulah Bondi, George Humbert, Anna Konstant, T.H. Manning, Matthew McHugh, John Qualen, Conway Washburne, and Eleanor Wesselhoeft, Street Scene (1929/1931)
• Charles Laughton, Payment Deferred (1931/1932)
• Walter Huston, Dodsworth (1934/1936)
• May Whitty, Night Must Fall (1935/1937)
• Gabriel Dell, Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Billy Halop, Bobby Jordan, Marjorie Main, and Bernard Punsly, Dead End (1935/1937)
• Humphrey Bogart and Leslie Howard, The Petrified Forest (1935/1936)
• Roland Culver and Guy Middleton, French Without Tears (1936/1939)
• Frank Craven and Martha Scott, Our Town (1938/1940)
• Raymond Huntley and Lloyd Pearson, When We Are Married (1938/1943)
• Raymond Massey and Howard Da Silva, Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1938/1940)
• Katharine Hepburn, The Philadelphia Story (1939/1940)
• Monty Woolley and Mary Wickes, The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939/1942)
• Jean Adair and Josephine Hull, Arsenic and Old Lace (1939/1944)
• Patricia Collinge, Charles Dingle, Dan Duryea, John Marriott and Carl Benton Reid, The Little Foxes (1939/1941)
• Paul Lukas and Lucile Watson, Watch on the Rhine (1941/1943)
• Kay Hammond and Margaret Rutherford, Blithe Spirit (1941/1945)
• Brenda Bruce and Ronald Squire, While the Sun Shines (1943/1947)
• Josephine Hull and Jesse White, Harvey (1944/1950)
• Judy Holliday, Born Yesterday (1946/1950)
• Tom Pedi, The Iceman Cometh (1947/1973)
• Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, and Kim Hunter, A Streetcar Named Desire (1947/1951, both directed by Elia Kazan)
• Henry Fonda, Mister Roberts (1948/1955)
• Mildred Dunnock, Death of a Salesman (1949/1951 film version)
• Lee J. Cobb, Death of a Salesman (1949/1966 TV version)
• Shirley Booth, Come Back, Little Sheba (1950/1952)
• Julie Harris, Brandon deWilde, and Ethel Waters, The Member of the Wedding (1950/1952)
• Eileen Heckart, Ruth McDevitt, Janice Rule, and Kim Stanley, Picnic (1950/1952)
• Kenneth More, The Deep Blue Sea (1950/1952)
• Julie Harris, I Am a Camera (1951/1955)
• Harvey Lembeck, William Pierson, and Robert Strauss, Stalag 17 (1951/1953)
• Tom Ewell, The Seven Year Itch (1952/1955)
• Deborah Kerr, John Kerr, and Leif Erickson, Tea and Sympathy (1953/1956)
• Henry Jones, Eileen Heckart, Nancy Kelly, and Patty McCormack, The Bad Seed (1954/1956)
• Hal Holbrook, Mark Twain Tonight! (1954/1967 TV version)
• Lloyd Nolan and Robert Gist, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (1954/1955 TV version)
• Anthony Franciosa and Henry Silva, A Hatful of Rain (1955/1957)
• Andy Griffith, Myron McCormick, and Don Knotts, No Time for Sergeants (1955/1958)
• Ed Begley, Inherit the Wind (1955/1965 TV version)
• Burl Ives and Madeleine Sherwood, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955/1958)
• Rosalind Russell and Peggy Cass, Auntie Mame (1955/1958)
• Jason Robards, Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1956/1962)
• Laurence Olivier and Brenda De Banzie, The Entertainer (1957/1960)
• Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke, The Miracle Worker (1957/1960)
• Paul Scofield, A Man for All Seasons (1957/1962)
• Ralph Bellamy, Sunrise at Campobello (1958/1960)
• Murray Melvin, A Taste of Honey (1958/1961)
• Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, Madeleine Sherwood, and Rip Torn, Sweet Bird of Youth (1959/1962)
• Entire cast, A Raisin in the Sun (1959/1961)
• Alan Bates and Donald Pleasence, The Caretaker (1960/1963)
• Lee Tracy, The Best Man (1960/1964)
• Entire cast, Purlie Victorious/Gone Are the Days! (1961/1963)
• Robert Redford, Mildred Natwick, and Herb Edelman, Barefoot in the Park (1963/1967)
• Jason Robards, William Daniels, and Gene Saks, A Thousand Clowns (1963/1965)
• Jack Albertson and Martin Sheen, The Subject Was Roses (1964/1968)
• Walter Matthau, Monica Evans, John Fiedler, and Carole Shelley, The Odd Couple (1965/1968)
• Ian Holm, Vivien Merchant, Terence Rigby, and Paul Rogers, The Homecoming (1965/1973)
• Julie Herrod, Wait Until Dark (1966/1967)
• Michael Greer, Fortune and Men’s Eyes (1967/1971)
• James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander, The Great White Hope (1967/1970)
• Entire cast, The Boys in the Band (1968/1970)
• Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, and Tony Roberts, Play It Again, Sam (1968/1972)
• John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, Home (1970/1972 TV version)
• Alan Bates, Michael Byrne, and Richard O’Callaghan, Butley (1971/1974)
• Penelope Keith, The Norman Conquests (1973/1977 TV version)
• Peter Firth, Equus (1974/1977)
• John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, No Man’s Land (1975/1975 TV version)
• Entire cast, Abigail’s Party (1977/1977 TV version)
• Jack Lemmon, Tribute (1978/1980)
• Harvey Fierstein, Torch Song Trilogy (1982/1988)
• Spalding Gray, Swimming to Cambodia (1984/1987)
• Matthew Broderick, Biloxi Blues (1984/1988)
• Eric Bogosian, Talk Radio (1987/1988)
• Carl Gordon, Tommy Hollis, and Lou Myers, The Piano Lesson (1987/1995 TV version)
• Morgan Freeman, Driving Miss Daisy (1987/1989)
• Alec Baldwin, Prelude to a Kiss (1998/1992)
• Stockard Channing, Six Degrees of Separation (1990/1993)
• Mercedes Ruehl and Irene Worth, Lost in Yonkers (1990/1993)
• Nigel Hawthorne, The Madness of George III/The Madness of King George (1991/1994)
• William H. Macy, Oleanna (1992/1994)
• Jeffrey Wright, Angels in America (1993/2003)
• Randy Becker, Stephen Bogardus, John Glover, John Benjamin Hickey, and Justin Kirk, Love! Valour! Compassion! (1995/1997)
• Michael Shannon, Bug (1996/2006)
• Entire cast, The History Boys (2004/2006)
• Frank Langella and Michael Sheen, Frost/Nixon (2004/2006)
* * *
The theatrical trailer for the 1945 film version of Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit, directed by David Lean:
Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden perform scenes from the original stage production of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire as part of an extremely rare radio performance given while the play was still running on Broadway. Tandy, who created the role of Blanche, was subsequently replaced by Vivien Leigh in the film version. John Mason Brown is the host, and Elia Kazan talks about staging the production and introduces the scenes. This program was originally broadcast by WOR-AM on April 4, 1948:
